Time ticking on Jauron

October, 12, 2009

10/12/09

5:43

PM ET

With road games coming up against the New York Jets and the Carolina Panthers, Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson elected not to dismiss head coach Dick Jauron. The Bills don't have a bye week until Nov. 8. It's clear Jauron's job is on the line with a 1-4 start and a no-huddle offense that had nine false starts in an humiliating 6-3 home loss to the Cleveland Browns Sunday. Wilson is obviously hoping the team can turn around their season while they are away, but he also knows the home crowd is furious with the season.

Thin at LB: If things weren't bad enough for the Bills, they have to patch their defense at the linebacker position. Kawika Mitchell and Marcus Buggs were lost for the season because of knee injuries, leaving Keith Ellison as the only healthy linebacker left to play over the next couple of weeks. Middle linebacker Paul Posluszny is probably two weeks away from coming back to play, so Jauron will likely move Ellison, an outside linebacker, to the middle and patch the outside with Ashlee Palmer and Jon Corto, who were primarily special teams players when the season began.

Choice cut: The Seattle Seahawks release of rookie defensive tackle Michael Bennett, an undrafted rookie find this season, apparently created a little excitement around the league. Two teams -- the Tampa Bay Buccanneers and the San Francisco 49ers -- put in waiver claims on Bennett. He was awarded to the Bucs, who are 0-5.

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

John Clayton

John Clayton is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He brought his vast NFL knowledge -- and prodigious list of contacts -- to ESPN in 1995 after a long career covering the NFL as a newspaper reporter in Pittsburgh and Seattle. His presence across the network is ubiquitous, from ESPN.com and "SportsCenter" to ESPN Radio and ESPN The Magazine.

Clayton was inducted into the writers' wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007. A 1976 graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, he was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2001.